I woke up to bright sunshine and at 0745 GMT, I was doing a hydrogen alpha shoot while my laptop was receiving my e-mails. I was not only pleased to see the Sun showing even more detail than the day before but also the features I had seen the day before were still there. I even captured a couple of prominences that I hadn't seen visually.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

At 1200 GMT there was
enough clear sky to see the Sun in hydrogen alpha light. Unfortunately, the cloud
moved in before I could complete the shoot. I could see a small prominence and
3 large filaments but couldn’t capture all of them “on film”.

The Sun was quiet when I checked it with my binoculars (filtered, of course!) before starting work. I could make out a sunspot pair, although a couple of smaller sunspots were also visible on the Big Bear Images.

The original shots
didn’t have enough quality to perform stacking, without getting some very
unplanetary like shapes! However, the use of GIMP gave a much clearer image
than the originals, especially on Mercury.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

I woke up to bright
sunshine, so popped out at 0715GMT to shoot the Sun with my PST before starting
work. There was a nice group of prominences at the top (south) and plenty of
filaments on show. The photos also revealed some smaller prominences and more
filaments than I saw. The Sun was coming alive again!

Sunday, August 26, 2012

This was the second
attempt I made at this. I had left the Maksutov on the same focus that I’d used
on the Moon a few days ago. Although I obviously need a lot more practice, I
was able to capture a sunspot, with a small companion and another shot showing
limb darkening.

I checked the Sun with
my Coronado PST. It was relatively quiet, with most of the activity confined to
the top of the disc (actually the bottom as the PST inverts the image). I took
4 full disc frames and 2 close-up frames before cloud moved in, yet again!

Unfortunately, the
capture wasn’t good, so I ended up with a prominence shot of the full disc and
a partial disc shot of the surface detail.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

I was out at 0040 GMT
after a cloudy day. The sky was clear apart from a hazy patch near the western
horizon. My plan was to take multiple pictures of Perseus, with the idea of
stacking them, while checking out the sky with the binoculars.

I started off with
Melotte 20 and noticed even more stars than usual. The Pleiades showed quite a
few stars as well, as did the Hyades. I could also see the Andromeda Galaxy
(M31) in all its glory, even picking up a hint of dust lanes. By contrast, the
Pinwheel (M33) didn’t show much, with just a few hazy patches giving a hint of the
spiral arms. M34 was about as clear as it gets.

Unfortunately, the
session was curtailed early, as cloud moved in.

As for Perseus, I
captured 9 frames. I stacked them using Registax 5 and aligned on Alpha Persei
and a couple of surrounding stars. I found that the stars of Cassiopeia were
trailing due to the Earth’s rotation, so I had to crop them out. Maybe I will
need to think of aligning my shots properly using an equatorial mount but,
amazingly, I am still finding that this digital camera photography has a lot
more to discover about it.

The next evening I
photographed Virgo and Libra, with Libra quite low down. The Virgo shot
consists of 3 frames stacked with Registax 5 and the Libra shot consists of 5
frames stacked with Microsoft ICE. The Arithmetic functions of Paintshop Pro
and Curves function of GIMP were used to achieve the final images.

Friday, August 24, 2012

I often travel on business and sometimes I am able to visit places that give me a better view of southern constellations than I get in the UK.

I reprocessed some images and found that where I have multiple images without a terrestrial background, such as buildings or trees, that using Registax 5 with a large align box works, where Microsoft ICE doesn't.

However, neither program was able to create a mosaic of the whole area.

GIMP was also much better at getting rid of noise and light pollution than Paintshop Pro was on the original shots. I removed this haze from the top up and cleared more as I reached the bottom.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

This photograph was composed of 5 frames stacked
using Microsoft ICE. The colours were split using Paintshop Pro and the Green
channel added to itself 8 times. Finally, the Curves function of GIMP was used
to remove the noise.

This photograph was
composed of 8 frames stacked using Microsoft ICE. The colours were split using
Paintshop Pro and the Green channel added to itself 4 times. Finally, the
Curves function of GIMP was used to remove the noise.

I checked the Sun with the binoculars at 1110 GMT. There was quite a lot of fast moving cloud and, although the sky was clearer than the day before, I still didn't see any sunspots. Some faint ones were visible on the Big Bear images.

At 1215 GMT I bin scanned the Sun through moving cloud but was unable to see
any sunspots.I checked the Sun with the
PST at 1800 GMT. It was rather quiet and the stand-out features were 3 small
prominences and a filament. Unfortunately, none of the shots came out.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

I went out for a look at 0020 GMT and conditions had deteriorated, especially near the horizon. With a low laptop battery, I decided to do a binocular scan. I saw Jupiter low in the east but could only see one moon. Aldebaran was barely visible to the unaided eye but the Hyades actually showed quite well. The Pleiades (M45) showed the main asterism. Melotte 20 showed well and I could just make out M34. To the west, the Wild Duck cluster (M11) was lost in the murk but M13 was just visible. I could also see M15.

I could also see M29 and M39 in Cygnus, objects that I sometimes lose on very clear nights when they are difficult to see against the Milky Way background.

I did my usual tour of the summer double stars and ended up with the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and I could just see some of the Pinwheel (M33).

I was unable to image
either Epsilon or Delta Lyrae the day before but I went out at 2300 GMT and
snapped them both. Epsilon was rather difficult, as it nearly filled the field
of view of the SPC880 webcam.

There were some fleeting breaks in the cloud and
during one of these at 23:10 GMT I managed to get a shot of Albireo. I took
some back-up frames with the compact digital camera but didn’t need them, as
the SPC880 did it’s job well.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The original shot was of 8 seconds exposure using a compact digital camera help to an F/5 80mm refractor. I processed the nebula separately from the background stars to enhance the nebula and remove the noise from the stellar background.

As it was quite cloudy and the cloud was moving a lot, I settled for a binocular scan of the Sun. As the last observation, there was a single large sunspot visible, which had rotated nearer to the limb. Even the Big Bear images were rather quiet.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The sky finally cleared at about 2110 GMT. I set up my laptop to use WXastrocapture to take 1 second exposures using the built-in webcam of my laptop. As luck would have it, the capture program failed! I returned indoors and set up my digital camera, after a reboot failed to cure the problem.

From 2120 GMT I continued to monitor the east and north east of the sky, while taking multiple shots of the constellations in the area, just hoping that one shot might capture a Perseid. I saw 3 faint ones in the hour but near the end of the session I saw a magnitude 0 one start from the Square of Pegasus and finish at the radiant, A “reverse Perseid” and I wondered how unlikely that was!

The featured shot is of Pegasus. For Cassiopeia, Perseus and Andromeda, please check out my Photobucket album.